


Dark and Stormy Night

by Dedicate Kiwicrocus (cranky__crocus)



Series: SMACKDOWN '11 R2, R3, Final - CIRCLECEST [35]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/F, Gen, Goldenlake, smackdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2011-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:45:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/pseuds/Dedicate%20Kiwicrocus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thunder growled, crackled and at last boomed above 6 Cheeseman Street...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SMACKDOWN at Goldenlake: fiefgoldenlake.proboards.com
> 
> Yes, I went there.

Thunder growled, crackled and at last boomed above 6 Cheeseman Street; the walls shook and shuddered. Two mages looked to a third.

            “What?” Tris snapped. “Every storm and drop of rain can’t be blamed on me. You two and Sandry, always connecting me with weather.”

            “We didn’t—”

            “Briar, I _hear_ you thinking about your plants, you’re thinking so hard. And then you can think of me. It’s not so difficult to guess.”

            He sighed, defeated and caught. “Is there _anything_ you can do?”

            Tris huffed and stood, closing her book. She hurried out of the room.

            “Does that mean yes?” Briar inquired to the remaining member of the room.

            Daja grinned. “I think so.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tea for four?” Sandry rephrased.

Tris entered the Cheeseman House study after one particularly loud clap of thunder. She had a sopping-wet Sandry in tow, clothing dry as a desert but her hair seemingly ocean-dipped.

            “Sandry!” Briar called as he caught sight of her. “You told us you had business to attend us—and _promised_ to stay put once you chose your location!”

            Sandry shifted from foot to foot. “I, erm, lied?”

            Daja threw the blanket from her lap to Sandry. “Seems a slippery slope for the future Duchess of Emelan.”

            Sandry wrinkled her nose as she patted her hair dry. “Oh, ha ha. Don’t you all have some tea in this house?”

            “Yes.” Tris took her seat in the corner. “What we don’t have are _servants_.”

            “Tea for four?” Sandry rephrased. Three heads nodded.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tea, anyone?”

Briar winced as light flashed outside the window of the study. Almost immediately, thunder shook the house. He turned to Tris.

            “Were you able to do anything for the plants?”

            She gazed up from her book and pulled her spectacles down her nose to stare at him. He shifted in his seat. “I essentially put them in a bubble, but it’s permeable enough for some rain. They should be safe.”

            Briar smiled tenderly as he thought of his plants, safe and not-too-dry. “Thanks, Tris.”

            “Don’t mention it.” She pushed her glasses up her nose once more. “Really. I’ll have people all over Summersea hoping for the same.”

            “Glad to know I’m special.” Briar grinned. Tris zapped him with a finger of lightning, which only drew a chuckle.

            Sandry stepped into the room with a tray of tea and biscuits. “Tea, anyone?”

            Daja raised her hand. Tris and Briar were busy attacking one another with vines and sparks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A storm isn’t so bad like this,” she decided.

Lightning flashed outside the window. The four candles in the study flickered, although the four mages in their proximity did not appear to mind.

            Sandry folded her letter, tied it with ribbon and slipped it into an envelope, which she sealed with wax heated by the candle itself. She sat back in her chair. “Shall we start a fire? It would be homier, surely.”

            Before she could finish speaking, a fire sprang up in the fireplace on the far side of the room. Tris turned to Daja. “That was fast.”

            The other woman merely grinned and walked to a fire-side chair, one of four. Briar followed her immediately, Sandry and Tris soon after. Sandry had dropped her letters and had picked up a book; the others already carried them. She slipped out of her slippers, stretched her toes and tucked herself into the final armchair with her feet beneath her and a blanket spread over her lap.

            “A storm isn’t so bad like this,” she decided.

            “A storm is never so bad,” Tris corrected. Still, she smiled with a hint of tenderness. “But I find I quite this one, spent this way.”

            “Same,” Briar added, with a look to Tris, “now that I know my plants are safe.”

            “I told you not to mention that,” she scolded.

            “ _I_ think it’s sweet,” Sandry argued. She smiled as she opened her book.

            Tris scoffed and opened her own; she turned the page with a breath of breeze. “Precisely why it shouldn’t be mentioned.”

            Sandry giggled.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Remember when Rosethorn used to tell us those frightening stories during storms?”

 “Remember when Rosethorn used to tell us those frightening stories during storms?” Sandry queried as she stared at the flickering flames of the study-hearth fire.

            “That and Lark scolding her,” Briar replied with a grin. “I hardly saw Rosethorn so animated as around the hearth during a storm.”

            “You could hardly sleep after some of them,” Daja teased. “Bragged about street-urchin tales being ‘a right lot more frightnin’ and couldn’t hack Rosethorn’s stories anyway.”

            “To be fair, they _were_ frightening,” Tris pointed out. She sat back in her armchair. “I’ve heard many tales since and few matched hers. Though I don’t know why I’m sticking up for Briar.”

            “I was wondering the same thing, Coppercurls.”

            “Consider my defence revoked.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What did I say about my honour?”

 “Can we please leave my honour intact for one evening?” Briar requested with a flourished grin. He turned in his armchair and sat with his legs over one arm. Daja took a swipe at his feet; he tickled her with his toes. “I really don’t scare easily; Rosethorn’s stories are an exception to a firm rule.”

            “Your feet are like hands!” Daja cried as she caught her breath and held his foot still. “Are you a monkey? Should we put you in an animal collection?”

            “What did I say about my honour?”

            “Is that to say you have any?” Tris posed through a crooked smile. “Because I must have just missed it.”

            Sandry hurried to change subject as thunder broke over the house once more. She thought of their last conversation and smiled. “I always thought Lark would be the theatrical one with stories, not Rosethorn.”

            Briar laughed. “They forced her to take _acting_ classes at Lightsbridge. She had a story-telling class; she told me she failed abysmally then, because the stories were of charming men and fair women.”

            “No wonder she prefers fireside fear-stories now,” Tris concluded. “I remember that class. I re-told one mythical story of two male loves; my teacher nearly had a fit.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What was your favourite stormy fireside Rosethorn story?”

Daja prodded at the fire with her magic; it flared up to greet her power. Sandry jumped as she saw the movement from the corner of her eye. It sparked a question in her.

            “What was your favourite stormy fireside Rosethorn story?” she asked of her friends.

            Tris grinned over at her. “Bloody Narie.”

            “Was that the one with the witch who stole life from the girls of a farmer village and cursed the town when they burned her at the stake?” Briar questioned, frowning.

            “Yes. But according to Rosethorn it was an _Anderran village_ and she was _there_ ,” Tris reported, grinning wickedly. She leered at Briar. “And after she told you about saying Narie’s name in reflective surfaces you were afraid to bath for a week and looked more straggly than ever.”

            Daja laughed. “You were the one who said you wanted to be Bloody Narie when you grew up, Tris, weren’t you? Ripping bodies to pieces and trapping their souls in burning torment within the surfaces… You followed Briar around whispering her name.”

            “That _sounds_ like Tris,” Sandry said. She shivered. “And that was a good story. I never expected Rosethorn’s screeching screams, yet she pulled one almost every story; I always screamed along!”

            “Even Lark did, once,” Briar stated to reassert his own honour, “and she must have known all the stories.”

            The four laughed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My favourite Rosethorn storm-story was the one about the dog licking,”

 “My favourite Rosethorn storm-story was the one about the dog licking,” Briar declared as he stared at the fire before the four of them. To his credit, he didn’t jump at the thunder booming overhead; he just laughed.

            “Ah, yes,” Tris murmured as she recalled the story. She had become the unofficial scribe of Rosethorn’s evening tales, as scare stories were a love of hers. “Josefi, who had a dog that slept under her bed and licked her when she was frightened.”

            “But her parents went away for the evening, for a ball,” Sandry joined in, eyes glittering in the flickering light.

            Daja spoke next: “In the evening she was afraid and alone—”

            “—so she reached under her bed and felt a lick,” Tris added. She was grinning. “She was content for a while, but when she woke in the night, she remembered she was alone and heard a dog-like whine—”

            “—and dipped her hand below her bed to check on her dog.”

            “She felt another lick and felt comforted enough to sleep.” Daja turned to Tris.

            Tris stood and walked to the window, peeking out behind Sandry’s curtain as if inspecting for something specific. “The next morning she woke to the sound of her dog barking.”

            Sandry spoke up. “But she was confused because—”

            Daja, grinning. “The dog was outside.”

            Briar laughed; it was a young and gleeful sound. “That was the first night Rosethorn and Lark had hearthfire duty _together_ , wasn’t it, when we were 13? They said we were old enough for them to leave us alone.”

            “We all slept with Little Bear on your bed that night,” Sandry confirmed, smiling fondly at the memory.

            Tris barked out a laugh. “When Rosethorn and Lark found us in the morning, Rosethorn nearly keeled over cackling and Lark scolded her right there and then.”

            “But we never forgot to clean under our beds again, did we?” Daja posed with a wicked smile.

            Sandry turned to Briar. “Is the fact that you sleep directly on the floor the _only_ reason that story’s your favourite—because it didn’t affect you?”

            Briar scoffed at that, but when he turned away Daja and Tris nodded.

            “That and we never found out what was under the bed.” Tris ducked the cushion Briar threw.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Trust Daj’ to put a real deep meaning into a ghost story.”

 “I like the story about the Storm Hag,” Daja murmured, softer than the rain battering the window of her study. She recalled Rosethorn’s old fire-side story and smiled.

            “Rosethorn had a story about Tris?” Briar retorted. He caught the cushion Tris threw at him; he had previously thrown it at her.

            “That makes sense, Daja,” Sandry responded, ignoring her two siblings. “The sea speaks to you.”

            “I would hope not to hear _her_ sea voice.” Daja grinned and cleared her throat. Her siblings stopped and stared as she started singing the Sea Hag’s song. “ _Come into the water, love, dance beneath the waves—where dwell the bones of sailor-lads inside my saffron cave_.” Her voice was rich and deep; her siblings smiled to hear it.

            Briar blinked. “I forgot Rosethorn sang that. It was the first time we heard her sing, wasn’t it?”

            Tris nodded. “And she took great delight in telling us that those who didn’t hear the song and flee received no mercy from the Storm Hag, who captured ships with her whirlpool and embraced the sailors with long green arms.”

            “‘Where she will feast on your body amongst the weeds’,” Briar quoted verbatim, grinning. “She used that line on me a few times, apart from the story.”

            Daja chuckled. “What I like is that it reminds us to stay alert once the storm is through, that we’re not suddenly free from danger. I knew many ships to suffer damage or deaths from laziness and foolhardiness after storms. The Storm Hag teaches constant vigilance.”

            Briar pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Daja. “Trust Daj’ to put a real deep meaning into a ghost story.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My favourite was the Bride story..."

“My favourite?” Sandry repeated. A subtle blush dusted her cheeks, minimally discernable in the firelight of the study. “You all will laugh at me.”

            “As if we haven’t laughed at each other enough,” Briar countered. “But we can promise to be kind.”

            “I can,” Tris agreed. Her eyebrow rose with her grin. “But can you trust a street-urchin?”

            “What’s your favourite story, Sandry?” Daja reiterated, voice low and smooth; she had just shared her own favourite story—the Storm Hag. She cut Tris and Briar a glance.

            “My favourite was the Bride story,” Sandry answered. “The pretty, picky girl of the village at last falling for a dashing man home from Lightsbridge and the two setting out to marry.” She took a breath and added further theatrics to her voice. “But the bad-and-beautiful, independent and well-travelled bar wench had caught his eye, so on the day of the wedding he snuck off with her instead and left the pretty village girl behind. She died on the spot.”

            Briar sat forward in his chair. “How’d she get him back? I can’t remember, but girls always do…”

            “Even from death?” Tris cackled. “You have more confidence in us than I. But go on, Sandry.”

            “After the man’s father died, he snuck into the graveyard to seek forgiveness from his father, who had supported the bride. She rose from the grave, all shining white dress and flaming hair and maggot eyes, and grasped his hand in a handshake. He escaped with a blackened hand. The death ate him from inside before a healer could inspect it outright.”

            Daja grinned. “I remember Rosethorn’s moral: never marry a prat who thinks with his prick.”

            “She got nasty when we were 14, didn’t she?” Briar smiled fondly. “But she did tell us that in her personal version, the bad girl seduced the pretty girl and left the Lightsbridge man to his toys.” Briar’s eyes widened. “I _just realised_ she meant Crane! …and she didn’t leave him _entirely_ alone, did she?”

            “Lark insisted the pretty girl seduced the bad girl, too,” Sandry added with a giggle. “But either way none of us is married yet, so perhaps the message stuck!”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have a letter. It looks like mischief.”

Rosethorn raised an eyebrow as the runner handed her an envelope. _Rosethorn & Lark_, she read, in impeccable and looping font.

            “Lark?” she called.

            The woman appeared from her workroom door. “Yes, Rosie?”

            “We have a letter. It looks like mischief.”

            “Then let us open it!” Lark hurried to the table and gestured for her partner to join her. Rosie sat and broke the seal, removing a ribbon-tied folded letter. The ribbon slithered away under Lark’s watch. Rosethorn untied the letter.

 

 _Rosethorn (and Lark),_ (“That’s Sandry,” Lark declared. Rosethorn nodded.)

            _It was a dark and stormy night…_ (Rosethorn groaned, but it turned to a grin soon after.)  _Tris reminds me that you hate that introduction, but it’s true and it sets the scene. We’re all here at Cheeseman House as this is written; a storm is surging above us. (Briar hurries to add that Tris protected the plants. Tris has flicked his ear now, reminding him that he wasn’t supposed to tell. Daja should look after them…)_

(The font changed. “Tris,” Lark decided.) _Yes, the plants are protected. I told Briar not to run his mouth about it but_ your _plants are worth it, so if ever bad enough weather arises that you feel the need for further fortifications…I’m available. Not that you_ would _need them, for unlike Briar, I’m sure you’ve discovered wonderful techniques of your own._ (“I knew she was a clever girl,” Rosethorn stated with a smirk. “Dolt of a boy clearly doesn’t remember anything I taught him…”)

            (The font changed once more. “Daja,” Lark announced.) _What Sandry and Tris meant to write is that we upheld your tradition—fireside storm-stories. We picked our favourites:Bloody Narie (Tris)_ (“That one is a personal favourite,” Rosie said, voice filled with humour.) _; the Dog Lick (Briar)_ (“Only because he sleeps on the floor, silly boy.”) _; the Storm Hag (mine)_ (“I caught her humming the tune occasionally.”) _; and the Bride Story (Sandry’s)_ (“I wasn’t sure they would remember that one,” Rosethorn admitted. Lark blushed and replied, “With the moral ‘don’t marry a prat who thinks with his prick’, Rosie? You thought they wouldn’t remember that? Or deciding that I was a beautiful bad-girl bar-wench who came and seduced you away from a Lightsbridge man?” “Lark, we’ll never get through this letter if we dwell.”)

            (A final font appeared. “Briar,” Rosethorn snapped before Lark. “I would recognise it half in sleep.”) _I’ve just performed the Rosethorn Scream; Sandry screamed as she heard it. Hah! She’s not immune either. And Lark, I don’t forget that you screamed once as well—how many times had you heard that story?_ (“Ten, and that boy’s memory is too long,” Lark decided with a light smile. Rosethorn snorted. “What have I been saying all along?”)

            (Sandry’s font returned.) _What we mean to say is that we love you and have brought some of Discipline here. You are both invited when next you are available. We would love a few more Rosethorn storm-stories; Tris could make the storm just for you._ (“I should hope not,” Rosethorn stated dryly. “And they’ve gone all soppy. I had no part in raising them, Lark.” “No, of course not, Rosie.”)

            _Keep well,_

 _Sandry, Tris, Daja & Briar_

 

            Lark folded up the letter. “There now, wasn’t that nice?”

            Rosethorn crossed her arms and grinned. “Nice enough, if my stories can still spook them.”

            Glaki peeked in from her bedroom, teenage features touched with make-up. “Did I hear ‘stories’?”

            Lark groaned.

            Rosethorn beckoned. “Have you heard the one about the four mages…?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! C: Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
